A post-modernist monument

To celebrate the year of housing and building, and the 1000th anniversary of the founding of Odense town, in 1988, a competition was launched for a housing plan for Blangstedgård in south-eastern Odense. Architects Boje Lundgaard and Lene Tranberg won. Their proposal …

To celebrate the year of housing and building, and the 1000th anniversary of the founding of Odense town, in 1988, a competition was launched for a housing plan for Blangstedgård in south-eastern Odense. Architects Boje Lundgaard and Lene Tranberg won. Their proposal included a plan with a number of parallel roads bisected by one diagonal road. One corner has a shopping area. The open but urban estate features houses designed by many different architects. It contains a combination of owner-occupied and rented housing spanning family houses, youth housing and accommodation for senior citizens.

Architects draw on each other's expertise

Blangstedgård is one of the greatest monuments to post-modernism in Denmark. It reveals how various architects have interpreted post-modernist design. The facades and body of the buildings were dissolved into staggered and flexible sequences. The diversity of design dominates. Colours, attics, bay windows, outdoor stairways, columns, curves, gables and other historical and regional references abound. The buildings vary from houses for single families to wings facing open blocks. Many of the leading architects of the 1980s contributed. In addition to Boje Lundgaard and Lene Tranberg, there are buildings designed by Vandkunsten, Nielsen, Nielsen & Nielsen and Schmidt, Hammer & Lassen, for example. Poul Ingemann's both restrained and simplified neoclassicism is evident in the three particularly famous buildings, The Baptistery", the longhouse and the gatehouse.
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